


you can't go home again

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Leverage
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Episode Tag, Gen, Other, Pre-Relationship, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25656994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: Sometimes you have to travel two-thousand miles to figure out that home was the place you left, not the place you tried to go, or, Eliot tries to figure out what to do with himself after he leaves his father's house for the second time.
Relationships: Alec Hardison & Parker & Eliot Spencer
Comments: 31
Kudos: 110





	you can't go home again

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after Low Low Price, but like, in the correct universe, where Low Low Price Job came before the Rundown Job instead of after. 
> 
> I wrote this whole thing because it bugs the heck out of me that afaik there’s no in-canon answer to why Eliot cut his hair, so I wrote 2900 words of post-Low Low Price blathering to explain it to myself...and actually addressed that in like one sentence, lol. I am who I am.

It's an hour from the house that used to be Eliot's home back to Oklahoma City, or at least, it's an hour if you care about speed limits. On this particular occasion, Eliot makes it in a little more than half that. He spends the time he made up driving aimlessly around, looking at all the shit that's here now that wasn't here when he left. What his hometown lost, this place has found. He doesn't really know how to feel about that. Good? Bad? Vindicated? He left home behind the first time for a long list of reasons, but one at the top of the list was that he didn't see a future where he was, not for himself, not for anybody else, and what do you fucking know. He wasn't wrong.

Even so, maybe he could have called at least once in the last decade. For all the good it would have done. At least he could say he tried. But he didn't, and now there's so much water under the bridge there's an ocean where there used to be a river.

There's a parking garage entrance on his right, one of the ones downtown connected to one of the big old hotels, and he pulls into it and just sits there for a bit. Looks at the empty space on the passenger seat where the six pack of beer was sitting. Looks at the signs on the wall of the garage directing him to the hotel's entrance. Thinks about staying the night. Thinks about how he's supposed to be back in Portland in a couple of days, because he asked that nice lady from the last job on a date, a real one, because he was suffering under some kind of delusion that he could be a normal guy instead of a miserable fucking bastard whose longest relationship to date is, ha, probably the one he doesn't actually have with Parker and Hardison. 

"Fuck," he says, staring at himself in the rearview mirror.

Whatever he decides to do tonight, he's pretty sure at this moment that all attempts at normalcy are a no-go, so he pulls out his phone, finds Tabitha's number, and cancels all of that bullshit with what he hopes is an appropriately apologetic note. He doesn't type _You reminded me of home and that was nice but you know what, I tried and it turns out they're right, and you can't go home again, and trust me on this one, you're better off without me_ , because he may be miserable but he knows full well that misery doesn't actually love company, misery doesn't love _anything_ , and he's not passing that on to a nice lady who's just trying to run her business and go about her day.

He hits send, and then he turns off his phone and leans against the headrest.

"Fuck," he says again. Now what?

He assesses the situation. Plays out his options. So, this fucking hurts, first of all. But that's fine. Eliot's no stranger to injuries. Getting them, fighting through them, healing up after. First rule of injuries: don't fucking lie to yourself about how bad it is. Well, the first rule is probably, get yourself the hell away from whoever did that shit to you, but the second one is definitely some variation on _be honest about how much it sucks_. And this shit may be an emotional fucking injury but that doesn't mean it doesn't fucking suck. Hell, it's his own goddamn dad, and that bridge isn't just burned, it's in little pieces floating downriver. It'll keep hurting tomorrow, regardless of what he does tonight. It'll probably hurt for a while.

How do you treat any of that? If this was just a broken bone or a concussion or some shit he'd know what to do, but he's kind of at a loss, right now. After all, the last time he went through this particular kind of injury the way he treated it was to fuck off and join the army, and none of that is an option anymore for any number of reasons.

He looks at the hotel sign again. What the fuck is he gonna do here tonight, anyway? He's close enough to Bricktown, which has really fucking taken off since he left here, so he could probably wander into some bar, pick somebody up, bring them back to a hotel room-- and then what? Fuck them and hope in the morning it doesn't sting as much?

Maybe it wouldn't be the worst way to spend an evening but it also just doesn't hit right, tonight. He's not good company right now. Doesn't want to fake being charming or happy or whatever for somebody for a night so he can feel just a little less miserable for a few hours before he leaves this place and never comes back. He came all the way out here for a real conversation that he's never really going to have, and now he has a very real ache in his chest from years and years of regret, and whatever he does after this he just wants it to be real, too, even if it's just wallowing in real misery for a while.

That does sound more like what Nate would do, though, and that isn't particularly interesting to him. He knows where that road goes and it's not anyplace he wants to be, because if it was Nate in this situation there's a good chance he'd crawl right into a bottle and never come out. And there's Sophie, who would paint on a convincing smile while she quietly bottled up all the pain and the hurt to use later for _motivation_ , like it was some magic potion she could drink later to fuel a con, and who knows, maybe she could, but he doesn't think he can. And what would Hardison do? Eliot snorts. Like he even has to ask. Stay, definitely. Drive back down there right now and try again. And again, and again, patiently offering his heart to people whether they deserve it or not. That's Hardison all over. And Parker-- Parker would cut and run and you'd never know she'd been there.

Except no, that's not right. That's Eliot's play, or it used to be. Parker would never have come back in the first fucking place. Parker would have known better.

If _he_ had known better, he'd still be in Portland, probably cooking the two of them dinner, because that's how he spends more evenings than he'd like to admit, lately. That, or re-planning the menu for the brewpub, because someone has to, and it looks like that someone has to be him, because if he leaves it up to Hardison the pizza will have anchovies and pineapple and the beer really will live up to Parker's promise of mouth crimes. They need him. And-- well-- okay, he needs them, too, probably. If he wants something real, they are definitely that. Sometimes they're just real weird, but even on their worst days hanging out with them is better than sitting here alone. They're his; he’s theirs. They're family. The only one he's got.

So he starts the truck and drives straight to the airport and asks the ticket agent if there's any way in hell he can get back to Portland tonight.

But there's nothing direct from here to Portland left going out today on any airline, and no matter how much he sweet talks the nice lady behind the counter, that ain't changing. She kinda reminds of his grandmother, which honestly is just not helping his emotional state, and is probably the reason why, when he opens his mouth to plead his case to this lady what comes out is, "I just really need to be with my family," instead of literally anything else.

"Bless your heart," she says, reaching across the counter to gently pat his hand, and _fuck_ , isn't that just the worst thing she could've said. People from other places tend to assume that phrase only means one thing, but the actual truth is that it can mean anything from _boy, are you a dumbass_ to _I see your pain and I want you to know that you are not alone in this cold dark world and I don't rightly know how but trust me, it is going to be okay_ , and this is the latter one, for sure. And he has held up under torture, under hours and hours and days and days of physical pain, without cracking, but this sweet lady and her voice and her eyes that crinkle up like his grandma's and her _bless your heart_ kindness are going to be the death of him, probably. He gives her a very watery smile in response, and she pats his hand again and says, "Let's find you a flight."

It takes four connections and an overnight flight to do it, but eventually, Eliot and his newfound best friend, Miss Roxanna, queen of the American check-in counter at the Will Rogers World Airport, work this shit out.

"Listen, honey," she says, as she hands him his tickets, "I don't know what you've got going on and I don't need to, but it's gonna be all right."

"Thank you, ma'am," he manages to say, and he's glad he has to run to make it through security and find his gate because he can't stand here and do this shit much longer without spilling his guts to a total stranger.

He doesn't sleep on the plane to L.A.. He does try, he just can't get there. Every time he closes his eyes he just sees his dad's stupid hardware store. So he stays awake. He even does the crossword, or most of it. He eats the plane snacks when the flight attendant comes around with the basket of slightly fancier shit that they serve in first-class. Maybe he flirts with her a little, but only out of habit. Mostly he just stares out the window and wonders what Parker and Hardison are doing right now and why he thought he needed to leave in the first place, and then he thinks about that last job and that old guy, Martin, and realizes that he was always going to try to go home again, so maybe he can at least stop beating himself up for that.

He cuts his hair in the bathroom of the American Airlines Admirals Club Lounge in terminal four of LAX at one in the goddamn morning, because he's tired and plane-sweaty and even though they have showers here his hair just won't stop sticking to his damn neck and he's got two more flights before he's back in Oregon and he's about over it. So he palms some scissors from the lady at the lounge desk when she's not looking, hits the bathroom, and hacks it all off. It ain't clean or neat and honestly he doesn't give a fuck. It suits his mood. And when he looks at his reflection and feels a little pang that it's gone, that's even better. What does it matter? It's just hair. He's not Samson; his hometown wasn't Delilah. He doesn't get his power from it or some bullshit like that.

Because airlines are bullshit, from L.A. he actually has to go all the way back to Dallas before he can get to Seattle and his last flight, but at least after all of that the flight from SeaTac to Portland is over almost before it starts, and he shuffles off the plane and out of the airport like a zombie coming back to life. Eliot never thought he could be so goddamn grateful for Portland, so different from the home he left behind and still carries around in his heart. Portland, with all its rain and tall cedars and the looming specter of Mount Hood in the distance, is nothing like the place he left, but god, he could almost fall to his knees at the sight of all of it now.

What he means to do, when he gets in his car, is go to his place and pass out for a few hours before he inevitably finds his way to the brewpub. The drive is so easy and there's so little traffic this early that he just sort of autopilots himself around, and he doesn't even register that he's not at his own place until he's putting in the alarm code on Parker and Hardison's apartment door, muscle memory piloting his fingers through the sequence when his tired brain can't be bothered with the recall. The code's keyed specifically to him, he knows, so if anyone up there is awake and cares to see it, they'll know he's here and probably go right back to sleep, because it is early the fuck o'clock and he knows it.

He's exhausted and he feels like he's been on twice as many planes as it took him to get here, but he walks in, closes the door quietly behind him, and tosses his keys on the table by the door where he always leaves them when he's here. And it's just right. This, right here, this specific place, is just where he needed to be. He sinks onto the couch in the living room, too tired to haul himself any further, to the spare room that stays spare, just in case. Just in case of Eliot. He knows that. They've never told him it's his space. They also never told him he couldn't leave his shit there. So he's got clothes in the closet and maybe a few other things besides, a little home away from home, for the nights when he's here too late or has an extra beer or just plain does not want to go home to an empty apartment when his heart is here.

He's trying to will himself to get up when he hears the door to their bedroom open, catches a few lines of whispered conversation, first Hardison, then Parker. There's noise in the kitchen-- the soft beeps of the coffee pot, the click-hiss of the gas stove, the sizzle of bacon-- and then there they both are, right beside him.

Nobody looks at him funny. Nobody even says a word. Hardison sets a steaming cup of coffee on the coffee table in front of him; Parker follows it up with a plate of toast and bacon and eggs. A few minutes later they curl up, one of them on either side of him, holding their own plates, and nobody tells him to eat or drink, they just leave him be. But that midnight meal in the American lounge was hours ago, now, and he should eat before he passes out, probably, so he reaches for his plate and digs in, grateful that someone around here who isn't him has apparently figured out that you can have something besides hot pockets or cereal for breakfast.

The silence is comforting for a while, until it isn't, with neither of them saying a damn word, and what are they waiting for, anyway? He's never here this early unless it's for a reason, even if the reason is just that there wasn't anyplace else he wanted to be.

"Don't you want to know what I'm doing here?" he asks finally, when it seems like they're just going to keep on waiting until he says something.

"Why would you need a reason to be here?" Parker asks, and Hardison just looks up from his phone and says, "Yeah man, you're home," and shrugs, like of course there's nowhere else he would be, and god, if he's _home_ , then no, there really isn't anywhere else. It’s funny, because up until this moment, at least in his head, _home_ has still been a tiny town two-thousand miles east of here, but that’s not right, not anymore, and now he knows it, for sure. Looks like the lady at the ticket counter was right after all. It was gonna be okay. 

"Yeah," he says, with a grateful smile. "Yeah, okay. I'm home."

He's so tired he can't even clock who moves first, maybe Hardison, maybe Parker, hell, maybe it was him or even all of them together, but the end result is, there are two sets of arms wrapped around him and two sleep-warm people pressed against his ribs on both sides. And it's been a long day and a long year and a long life, to be honest, and he may be tired but he's not alone and he's home, so he just lets them hold onto him for a while, and he holds on right back. Maybe you can't go home again, but you sure as hell can make a new one. This one, at least, he is going to do his goddamn best not to burn to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my tumblr](https://coffeesuperhero.tumblr.com/). Come say hi! 
> 
> This story is dedicated to that one kind-hearted American Airlines ticket agent in DFW who got me home a few years ago when I had a lot of shit going on and I just really, really needed to be with my family. You were the absolute best, my dude, and I hope you're doing all right.


End file.
